Samhain '98 Samhain '98This is a strange thing to say about Greens, surely. Greens stand proud in our belief in decentralisation. In the dismantling and withering away of the state. In locally based democracy; in workplace based democracy; in voluntary and free associations. Surely?
Unfortunately, while our party’s sentiments and feelings do indeed tend towards that noble end, the body of our policies is swayed by more carnal desires. Examples of our party rejecting its own aims and opting instead to strengthen the coercive functions and economic power of the state occur with depressing regularity. Equally worrying is when we don’t bother saying what the instrument for change will be – because the overall thrust of our policies leads us to believe that it will be the state.
For a classic example, look at our animal rights policy. We know what we want – that animals be treated with respect. Unfortunately, we haven’t bothered working out by what route we get there. Instead we are content to use the state in all its glory as the means to our ends. Through fines the state shall reduce cruelty and pollution, through marketing the state shall promote alternatives to animal products, through the European Parliament the state shall ban blood sports and through the rule of law factory farming shall be ended.
And then there is our women’s policy, which negates its own radicalism by constant appeals to the state for help. I’ll just skim over the lowlights: the massive regulation of ads to ensure gender balance – including the demands for more authoritative female voice-overs, that women be portrayed as less passive, that older women be used more in ads, and that in general advertising (which I always assumed we weren’t in favour of) be under diktat to be more sympathetic to women. Worse still is the over-regulation of education – this includes re-education of teachers so as to eliminate gender prejudice and that boys be forced into domestic studies so as to eliminate gender prejudice. Naturally, it asks for a few bob from the state.
The process becomes even more ridiculous in the case of our Irish policy. Or, more accurately, our Irish policies, for we seem to have two. In the first case, we have an excellent and cogent analysis of the importance of organic growth for the language to establish itself and of the pernicious effect the state has on our language. Really, you should read it.
The second part, however, is one of the most absurd examples of cap-in-hand politics this side of an Intergovernmental Conference. It calls for a Language Advisory Service, and an Irish Language Academy (I kid you not – an Irish Académie Française!) to regulate grammar and coin new terminology, a state funded Irish-speaking university, a state funded Irish television, and finally a Language Act to regulate the amount of Irish used in broadcasting. And of course the few bob from the state, for sure it’ll come in handy.
At this point we should stop mocking and ask ourselves why.
Why does a broad variety of Green Party policies promote the shallow environmentalist line that we can somehow legislate for a green society? Why? – especially when most Greens do not believe this, for it is obvious to us that the state is precisely not the instrument through which a green world can be built.
In part, our approach can be blamed on the fact that those who draft policy are enthusiasts in their particular area, who don’t give a damn how their ideals are to be achieved, like kids who don’t care how they get to the sweeties so long as they get them. This is the classic drawback to single issue groups. And it is a problem which, quite frankly, a party with a coherent ideology should not have.
So can we solve the problem through a “statist audit”, where every positive reference to the state is found and eradicated? I think the rot goes deeper. The real problem is not that the state is seen as the panacea, it is that the alternative mechanisms through which we could achieve our aims are not being sought.
Part of the reluctance to find alternatives can be put down to laziness. There isa general lack of confidence in our ability to source and create and imagine engines for change other than the state. It is typical left-liberal sloppiness to demand this, to ban that, to make something compulsory, to beg for state money or whatever – and it is simply not good enough.
For it shows a huge lack of confidence in our worth and the worth of others. If the Green Revolution is truly an educational one, why do we show so little interest in trying to persuade, and so much in trying to legislate? And why do we show so little interest in using non-state groups for our ends – are we afraid we won’t be able to control them, or is it just another social democrat hangup that we haven’t even noticed?
In reality our willingness to use the state, or any other coercive instrument, to achieve our ends is nothing but a sign of failure, for we are giving up any faith in people’s autonomy and in the possibility of organic change, in favour of control from above. This fundamental lack of faith in humanity and people’s ability to govern themselves needs to be thrown out the window, for it stands in direct opposition to our beliefs in decentralisation and in freedom.
Of course, statists can claim in defence that they are victims of society. Our thoughts are moulded in a country where the state is ubiquitous, and appears to be benign. It is a combination of the concentration of power, and of the fact that in Ireland, almost uniquely, the powers concentrated in the state are seen as being possibly positive.
The latter feeling is in part due to our electoral system, which makes it virtually impossible not to be able to appear to be influencing somebody. It is in part due to the proliferation of Euro-money, FÁS money and Lotto money, which makes it virtually impossible not to be eligible for some type of grant. And, let’s face it, it is also due to the belief that a corrupt state is always susceptible to “influence”.
But let’s not fool ourselves: those forces which maintain the state and which are maintained by the state know their own interests. They are the interests of the factory farmers, of the large corporations, of the property developers, of their political friends, and of the corrupt network of appointees which is now our de facto government. And they stand directly opposed to green interests and to green ideals.
And when — I mean if — we get into government, what parts of our policy will we be promoting? Those demanding an end to growth, to central power and to the industrial system? Or the “nicer” ones, those which approach the state for handouts and demand the state gets tough on “anti-green deviants” – the two sides of the eco-fascist programme?
I hope it’s not the latter, for if so we can expect to be in Democratic Left’s position in a few years’ time – where for the price of our souls a few of the Party hierarchy find a nice comfortable position, in-and-out of government, and where our ideas become either irrelevancies or appendages to the normative state.
Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen: our ideas are too important to sell them cut-price to any enemy.
David Landy used to work for the Green Party
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